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Memorial Day in the United States, which this year landed on May 30, is often viewed as a symbolic mile marker in the baseball season.

It’s about a third of the way into the year and halfway to the Aug. 1 trade deadline. Hot and cold starts have mostly normalized, while division races are starting to take shape. In the last 20 years, 58 per cent of the teams that led their division on June 1 went on to win it, according to ESPN’s Stats & Information. So it’s by no means definitively predictive, but it’s a significant checkpoint.

And it seems a useful time to take stock of where the Blue Jays stand in comparison to this point last year.

Despite an underwhelming start to the season following last year’s expectations-raising playoff run, the Jays are in a better position today than they were through the first 55 games last year. They have 29 wins and are three games above .500 at the moment, compared to 25 wins and five games below .500 a year ago. They are four games back of Boston’s division lead, while last year at this point they were 4 1/2 games back.

OFFENCE

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The Jays’ “inability to score at the rate we saw last year is one of the big mysteries in the sport this year,” ESPN’s veteran baseball writer Jayson Stark said recently.

After leading the majors in runs scored by a historic margin last season, the Jays were expected to once again pound teams into submission this year. But despite having more wins than they did a year ago, they have scored 51 fewer runs.

It’s not due to a lack of power. They’ve hit more home runs than they did last year at this point. They have perhaps been a little unlucky, hitting just .284 on balls put into play, which is 13 points below the league average.

But they’re also striking out more and — perhaps most importantly — they have struggled to capitalize with runners in scoring position, hitting 30 points below the league average with a man at second and/or third.

A dozen more hits with runners in scoring position would bring them in line with the league average, and given how 10 of their 26 losses this year have been by just a single run, even just a few more timely knocks would likely have made a big difference to their win-loss record.

Five positions on the Jays’ diamond have produced below the league average offensively this year: catcher, first base, second base, shortstop and centre field. At this point last year they had three spots offering below average production.

The main culprits are Russell Martin, who has been the least productive catcher in the American League this season; Ryan Goins, who has since been moved to a backup role; Troy Tulowitzki, who started to awake from his early-season slump before he landed on the disabled list; Chris Colabello, who was dismal in the first two-and-a-half weeks of the season prior to his steroid suspension; and Kevin Pillar, who struggled in May after a decent start to the season.

With Martin showing signs of a rebound, Devon Travis taking over at second base, Justin Smoak performing well as the everyday first baseman and Darwin Barney filling in nicely for Tulowitzki, there is reason to believe the Jays’ offence should continue its upward trend and start to resemble something closer to last year’s juggernaut.

Jose Bautista, Josh Donaldson and Edwin Encarnacion all still have room to improve, but Tulowitzki and Martin are the X-factors.

PITCHING

Perhaps equally surprising as their lack of offence is how good the Jays’ starting pitching has been. After opting not to even make an offer to David Price, the Jays were seen to be choosing quantity over quality, hoping their world-class offence could carry a middle-of-the-road pitching staff.

In fact, their starting pitching has carried the team thus far.

No starting rotation in the American League has contributed more to its team’s chances of winning, according to Win Probability Added, a statistic that measures how every play inside a game increases or decreases a team’s likelihood of winning. The Jays’ starting staff trails only the Chicago Cubs in this regard. They also lead the majors in innings pitched and quality starts (at least six innings pitched with three or fewer runs allowed.)

Marco Estrada, Aaron Sanchez and J.A. Happ have all exceeded expectations and sit fifth, 11th and 13th in the AL in terms of ERA.

They’re the main reason why the Jays have allowed 31 fewer runs this year, despite the bullpen incurring a league-worst 14 losses and allowing nearly half the runners they’ve inherited to score.

The bullpen, however, has lately shown signs of settling in, improving their earned-run average by more than half a run in May compared to April. Roberto Osuna continues to prove himself as one of the top closers in the game, while rookie right-hander Joe Biagini has recently emerged to fill the void as a capable setup man. Thirty-nine-year-old Jason Grilli was added this week to give the relief corps more depth, but it remains the shallowest part of the Jays’ roster.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

Despite their losing record at the time, the Jays actually had a better run differential at this point last year than they do now. Run differential is considered — particularly in baseball’s sabermetrics community — as a better predictor of future success than win-loss record. That was part of the reason why departed general manager Alex Anthopoulos felt comfortable making a big push at last year’s trade deadline. He was confident the team was better than its middling place in the standings.

This year, the Jays’ record is exactly what it should be, according to their run differential. While it’s reasonable to expect the offence to continue to improve and the team’s veteran hitters to produce more in line with their career norms, it’s equally likely that the starting pitching will regress. Injuries could change everything.

But the concern is that if the Jays find themselves in a similar position as they did last year at the trade deadline — muddling around .500 in the middle of the divisional pack — they no longer have the minor-league assets to pull off the blockbusters that helped them surge up the standings in the second half.

Thirty-six games left until the all-star break. Fifty until the trade deadline.

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